Gates Foundation ramps up to spend wisely and rapidly

For the Gates Foundation, already the world's largest philanthropic organization, one challenge arising from Warren Buffett's recent $31 billion gift is not only how to spend the money wisely, but how to spend it fast enough.

Accepting Buffett's historic donation means the foundation must, for tax purposes, double its annual spending by 2009 to $3 billion a year. Since the gift was announced in June, the foundation has been scrambling to figure out just how to do that.

At the same time, it has received a flood of new grant inquiries, new job applications and media requests from around the world.

"I think everybody feels the excitement and pressure," said Gates Foundation spokeswoman Lisa Matchette. "It's like oh my gosh, it's going to mean a great change for us. It's a great opportunity and it's also a great responsibility to be smart about how the money is used."

Putnam Barber, senior consultant with the Executive Alliance of nonprofit leaders and a longtime observer of foundations, said the thought of spending such a sum conjures up an old cartoon.

"I think of Scrooge McDuck ... pushing money out the door with a bulldozer," he said. "The math is daunting."

The foundation is also preparing to build a new headquarters in Seattle that could have as profound an effect locally as the infusion of cash could globally. Design sketches were recently made public.

The scope of the plans is enormous. Ground is to be broken next year for the new headquarters campus, on a 12-acre parcel the foundation acquired on the eastern edge of Seattle Center. The purchase was the biggest sale of city property in Seattle's history.

Over the next 15 years, the foundation may build up to 1 million square feet of office space — five times the size of City Hall.

"Seattle becomes world headquarters not just for Microsoft," Seattle City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck said. "In this case, it's the world headquarters for a mission that I think is phenomenal."

As the foundation grows, its strategy for doubling its annual giving largely involves bolstering existing grant recipients, said senior policy officer Monica Harrington.

"A lot of what we're doing with the Buffett money is deepening and accelerating work that's already under way, and likely enlarging grants for grantees that have been effective," she said.

At the same time, the money gives program managers more room to try new things that would support the foundation's core mission.

That includes expanding a new program the foundation started in May focused on global development. The program makes grants to improve farm productivity and provide small business loans and other services in developing countries. The foundation is considering broadening its work to fund projects that support clean water and sanitation — such as bringing running water to remote villages in Africa.

"In many ways that work is about empowering people so they can lift themselves out of poverty because many of the health conditions we fight are directly related to poverty issues," said Harrington.

Accountability remains a top goal, she said, and the work of a group within the foundation that is charged solely with monitoring results will become even more important. As it ramps up over the next two years, the foundation plans to double its staff to almost 600 people.

Having the two-year window before it must start spending the Buffett gift is critical, she said. Grant inquiries have jumped from about 3,000 a month before the Buffett announcement to almost 12,000 a month in July. Job applications have also soared, to more than 3,000 a month.

Amid the enthusiasm, skeptics wonder whether money and technology alone can solve entrenched global health problems and whether so much power and influence should be entrusted to a single entity.

With the Buffett money, the foundation's budget will be twice that of the World Health Organization.

Anne-Emanuelle Birn, associate professor at the University of Toronto and Canada research chairwoman in international health, said Gates may be attacking the symptoms, rather than the deepest causes, of poverty and global illness. Others wonder whether such massive private funding will discourage governments from assuming responsibility.

"The Gates Foundation has turned to a narrowly conceived understanding of health as the product of technical interventions, divorced from economic, social and political context," she wrote in the Lancet, a medical journal.

In Seattle, the foundation is circulating drawings of its planned campus.

Sketches by the architecture firm NBBJ show three curved buildings enclosing a courtyard and surrounded by dense landscaping. A partially submerged, 1,000-stall parking garage near the intersection of Fifth Avenue North and Harrison Street would have a "green" roof of more landscaping.

There are also plans for an unusual amenity for a philanthropic foundation: a visitors center.

Steinbrueck said he envisions people coming from around the world. Since the foundation was created, Nelson Mandela, Oprah Winfrey and former President Clinton have visited.

After a briefing by the foundation last week, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels called the design spectacular, said Nickels' spokeswoman Marianne Bichsel. "It looks like it will develop into a landmark building for the city."

Presentations to City Council members and neighborhood groups have also been greeted with enthusiasm, said foundation spokeswoman Matchette.

As part of the $50.4 million deal with the city, the foundation is already beginning to build the parking garage. Then it will build two of the 85-foot-tall, swooping buildings for a move-in date of 2010, Matchette said.

There is no cost estimate for the project, she said. Schematic plans for the first two buildings could be ready as soon as October, with construction scheduled for spring 2008.

The third building is planned for later, she said, pending city proposals to reconfigure Mercer Street, lower Aurora Avenue North and reconnect Sixth Avenue in the area of site.

Kristi Heim: kheim@seattletimes.com or 206-464-2718.